Saturday, November 23, 2013

At the site where it's published you can mouse over individual states to see the flows for that state. Note that each line between a pair of states is the total exchange regardless of direction. Below is a freeze-frame of California, which again has a net loss; this correlates with the interesting fact that in 2010, for the first time since the Gold Rush, CA had more native-born residents than migrants.

Hong Kong, Austria and Belgium are the most mobile (cross international boundaries the most) and the US is the least. No big surprises there; in Belgium, no offense, if you miss your train stop, you're in another country, but if you live in Kansas then leaving your home country takes considerably more effort. This is the beginning of a national travel index. By this I mean: while traveling, I run into people from Israel and New Zealand all the time. Those countries are a) not that close to where I live or most of the places I've traveled and b) have a combined population of less than ten million. So some index of per capita travel rate and distance from home would give us an idea. With everyone out traveling, one wonders in Israel and New Zealand how there can be anyone at home minding the store!